Political scientist and media critic

January 04, 2006

What is Howard Fineman talking about?

Via Dan Drezner, Newsweek conventional wisdom machine Howard Fineman has published a typically insipid column on MSNBC.com on "winners" and "losers" from the Jack Abramoff plea agreement. His prediction of a reformist third party winning the 2008 election "going away" is especially absurd:

WINNERSThird-party reform movement: If Sen. John McCain doesn't win the Republican presidential nomination, I could see him leading an independent effort to "clean up" the capital as a third-party candidate. Having been seared by his own touch with this type of controversy (the Keating case in the '80s, which was as important an experience to him as Vietnam), McCain could team up with a Democrat, say, Sen. Joe Lieberman. If they could assemble a cabinet in waiting -- perhaps Wes Clark for defense, Russ Feingold for justice, Colin Powell for anything -- they could win the 2008 election going away.

With this prediction (which I've debunked many times), Fineman joins the ranks of Mickey Kaus, Ron Brownstein, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and many other pundits in failing to appreciate or even understand the barriers that make it virtually impossible for third parties to win. Shouldn't political writers have to understand freshman-level political science?

Comments

Yes. Fineman is totally insipid, as is his employer MSGOP. It's Good if they don't understand the imploding of the Repugnicans. A third party candidacy with exasperated GOP'rs will deliver the election to the Democrats. (think Perot in '92).

"Shouldn't political writers have to understand freshman-level political science?"

You would hope so, eh?

Similarly, I've been frustrated by political pundits pretending to be FISA experts or Constitutional scholars (NSA scandal). And I've been frustrated by pundits pretending to have any knowledge about the military (TANG scandal). Or pundits who claim some high-level structural engineering knowledge (NO Levees). Or those who claim to know when the world's oil is going to run out (were they trained in petroleum engineering or geology?), or those who pontificate about housing costs (did they work at HUD or have a degree in economics), or even, dare I say it, those who claim to know anything about the ethics of journalism.

The list goes on and on, Brendan, but I'd like to know, since you acknowledge that a pundit shouldn't write about a topic without some college-level schooling, what areas will you now stay away from because you weren't trained in that field?

What makes Fineman's article even worse is that many states (exactly how many I don't know) have "sore loser laws", which prevent someone who lost a nomination campaign from mounting a bid as an independent. So, even if one thinks that McCain COULD win as an independent, he certainly could not do it as an independent AFTER running and losing as a Republican.